Move To The West?

OPINION - Reader Views - PROTECTING PARRAMORE

August 3, 2002

Regarding your Wednesday editorial "Protect Parramore": Here's a news flash: Westmoreland to the Orange Blossom Trail is in Parramore. The Parramore Heritage Renovation area extends from Colonial Drive to the north to Gore Street on the south and from Interstate 4 to the east to the Orange Blossom Trail on the west.

If a site in Parramore were selected for a homeless facility based upon protection of the "neighborhood," as you suggest, its current location would be optimum. Your suggested location puts this public nuisance much closer to the majority of Parramore-area homeowners and residents. One can only wonder if the true reason for the proposed five-block move to the west is to insulate the now primarily commercial redevelopment occurring on the eastern boundary of Parramore.

Any Parramore stakeholder knows from experience that these "sweaty, scruffy and unshaven" men you discussed in your editorial constantly occupy doorways, vacant lots and abandoned buildings throughout the Parramore area. Moving the facility five blocks west will have no substantial effect and only prolong Parramore's and the city center's suffering.

Your rationalization for keeping the facility close to downtown because of proximity to other social-service is the same rationalization used the by the city of Orlando to install this public nuisance at its current location. This is a classic example of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The only rational and humane solution is, through a concerted effort, to move within a reasonable time all of the homeless facilities and providers to a single convenient location away from Parramore and, therefore, the city center. The current city administration has promised this and included Parramore-area protection in the growth management plan and zoning ordinance. To move the facility five blocks west within Parramore to an area now surrounded by homeowners and residential tenants could be seen as racism.